Fourth Time's the Charm
by HerRenegadeHeart
Summary: Something had been missing before, something hadn't been right, but whatever it was, Jemma had figured it out. Post 3x02.


The knock was so soft, so tentative that Coulson almost missed it. He turned to tell whoever was there that if it wasn't a "the world is burning" level of emergency to come back later when he was considerably less broody, but when he saw her, the words died on his tongue.

"Jemma," he said, surprised to see her there. _Jemma_ – they all had been using her first name a lot more. When the panic attacks and PTSD-fueled hallucinatory episodes hit, she tended to only respond when her first name was used. Garner said it had something to do with comfort drawn from childhood familiarity – she had just been Jemma long before joining SHIELD and adopting the military-esque style of simply using her last name. Whatever it was, it was helpful in pulling her out of her head and back to the present, so now everyone had just kind of adopted using it whenever she was in the room.

If Coulson was honest, however, he'd say that it was a little more than that. She just… wasn't "Simmons" anymore, at least not the way any of them remembered her. She was so much more fragile than the affable, brilliant, and endearing young woman they had once known. Coulson certainly couldn't blame her for the change, of course. Even after two months of being back, she still hadn't spoken much about what she had experienced during her time on the other planet, but what she had told them and what they had all witnessed during some of her PTSD episodes was chilling. How she'd even survived, he truly didn't know…

She shifted her weight anxiously and he realized he was staring. "I'm sorry. Is there something–"

She cut him off before he could finish his question by thrusting her hands forward, presenting him with a long, rectangular box, similar in shape to something flowers would be delivered in, only this box wasn't cardboard.

"What–"

"Fitz said that it wasn't right," she interrupted again, "that you said it just didn't feel normal."

Coulson frowned slightly, confused, but after she insistently extended her arms out even farther, he took the box from her and carefully opened it. Inside was a cybernetic hand. He immediately looked back up at her.

"He said you'd already been through three and that you were still having trouble adjusting. So I… I looked over everything, over the different models Fitz created and the adjustments he made, and your medical records, all your scans, and… well, everything," she rambled. "And we were talking and we thought that maybe…" She shrugged and gestured at the new hand.

For the first time since she'd entered his office, Coulson realized that Fitz was actually standing just a step outside the doorway. He wondered why the younger man wasn't standing beside Jemma now as he had been practically every moment since her return.

Jemma had been struggling with even the simple things, such as sleeping and eating normally, even holding a conversation. Despite the fact that she was back surrounded by her friends, and more so, people willing to protect her at all costs, she was still terrified. She tried to hide it, but in a facility full of spies and secret agents, not much was missed, and Jemma had never been a very good liar to start with.

Fitz had taken it upon himself to make sure she was constantly looked after, not that that had come as a surprise to anyone, and he'd slowly been trying to help her adjust to being back home. It had all been very slow-going though even when it came to getting back to work, which was especially odd considering the lab was Jemma's usual sanctuary away from any upheaval in her life.

However, with the trauma she'd endured haunting her on a daily basis, hindering her ability to function in any way close to how the normal Simmons would, she just… wasn't interested, wasn't ready, and no one even wanted to _approach_ the subject of her returning to the lab, much less pressure her to. They had all come to a kind of unspoken consensus to just let her get there in her own time. So, the fact that she had apparently been working with Fitz again caught Coulson completely off-guard.

"You made me a new hand?" he asked, unable to hide the surprise and tentative hopefulness in his voice.

"Fitz just thought that maybe if-if the problem was looked at through the eyes of biochemistry and less through engineering, we might be able to come up with something that would function better, and I-I… I wanted to do something, to help," she explained, wringing her hands together as her eyes darted about. "I wanted you to be able to feel normal again."

The last sentence was a near-whisper and Coulson felt his heart suddenly clench. _Because you don't yet._ She wanted to help him feel normal because it was something she was struggling with herself. She felt useless, and helpless, –she had said as much after a particularly bad attack that had left her breathless and shaking in Fitz's arms with Coulson and the others looking on in dismay– and Coulson fully understood those feelings, understood what a dark place that was to be stuck in. This though, while heart-achingly sad, was also… heartening. It was as if she thought that by helping him, she might begin to help herself.

Coulson met Fitz's eyes for a moment and he finally understood. Fitz wasn't inside beside Jemma because this was something she needed to do for herself, a step she needed to take without him there to be the direct buffer between her sometimes-overwhelming insecurities and everything else.

Of course, he wasn't completely gone because he knew, as everyone else did, that Jemma wasn't quite ready yet for him to be altogether out of her sight, but he was still slowly giving her the space she needed to hopefully regain at least some of what she had lost on that planet, some of the old Simmons. Sometimes Coulson forgot that behind all his engineering brilliance and complicated technobabble, Fitz was incredibly intuitive when it came to understanding the feelings of others, especially Jemma's.

"Unless, of course, you've grown used to the one you have now…" she said slowly, clearly unnerved by the silence that had fallen over the office again. She awkwardly held out her hands, ready to take the box back. "In that case, I can take it ba–"

"Oh, no no," Coulson said quickly, placing the box on his desk. Taking off his jacket and rolling up the sleeve of his shirt, he twisted and removed the cybernetic hand he had on. He replaced it with the new one, clicking it snuggly into the socket, and then paused a moment. He stared down at it. Was this the price of being a SHIELD director, he silently wondered, losing body parts and so much more? Was it worth it? Was there a right answer?

He heard Jemma shift her weight again, no doubt anxious to know the results of her and Fitz's hard work. He took a breath and then flexed. There was another pause… and then…

He looked quickly back up at her, awe, admiration, and affection all vying for the top emotion. "It's perfect," he whispered, and it was. No phantom pains, no delayed responses, no hitches in maneuverability. Something had been missing before, something hadn't been right, but whatever it was, Jemma had figured it out.

Or perhaps, Coulson considered, the solution had just been Jemma in general. Perhaps the issue had never actually been with the hand itself. Instead it had been an issue with his head, a psychosomatic response to not only the loss of his hand, but all the losses he had endured over the years, and the weight of all that combined pain had seen him reaching the breaking point the moment they had lost Simmons.

His sadness, disappointment, anger, _everything_ , had manifested in phantom discomfort in his arm, but now, upon fully realizing that the catalyst to that response had returned and was making strides, not matter how small, toward becoming whole again herself, he felt that discomfort disappear. A tension in his chest released and it was as if he could breathe again for the first time in a long time.

Was the world perfect? Was it free of danger? No, of course not, but... it was better and for now, that was enough.

Jemma didn't quite beam, not in the way she would have all those months ago, but there was something in her eyes, a spark of relief, of satisfaction… of elation, and it filled Coulson with even more hope. She couldn't ever be what she had been before just as his arm couldn't be, but she could get better, she _would_ get better. This was a first step towards that.

He held up his hand and maneuvered it about for a moment so she could see for herself how well she'd done and then dropped it down to his side. He thought about hugging her, wanted to, but then decided against it. He didn't want to distract her from this small bit of triumph by doing something that was perhaps a bit out of character for the two of them. He didn't want to potentially remind her of exactly how different things had become. He just wanted her to have this moment for herself.

So instead he rolled down his sleeve and gave her a smile, saying, "Thank you,... Simmons."

* * *

 _Author's Note_ : Just a little thing that popped into my head and demanded to be written. Hope you enjoyed it!


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